


John Opens a Door

by Lobelia321



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-01
Updated: 2006-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing experiment in style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Opens a Door

_**writing experiment in style**_  
My writing muscles have atrophied.

I have been writing a lot but not posting. Some days ago I posted my first quickie fic in ages and was rather buoyed up by it. Then I decided to send my next quickie fic to someone else to look over and discovered that I have a lot to learn, still. Some things to re-learn that I thought I had already learned, and other things to learn that I never managed to get under my belt properly.

It is sobering and humbling.

I could, of course, go away and write to myself and for myself only. But as I have found out, I am in need of posting. Writing without posting is too much like origfic. It has advantages (I do not expose myself) and disadvantages (it is so lonely, and maybe one doesn't learn from lonely). So I am going to take the risk, I think, and continue to post stuff, including stuff that is maybe not quite baked through yet. I will lj-cut, though, so as not to burden the unwary with my scribblings.

To free my mind from angst and what [](http://cupidsbow.livejournal.com/profile)[**cupidsbow**](http://cupidsbow.livejournal.com/) calls performance anxiety, I am going to start with some writing experiments. If anybody wants to join in...? I know that one of the things I never really got under my belt is plot structure but I'm going to go easy and start experimenting with style because plot structure requires a full-blown plot to structure. I'm adapting the [ Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau](http://www.growndodo.com/wordplay/oulipo/queneau.html). I've done writing exercises like this before but haven't been able to find all of them in my Memories. Two of my previous efforts are [ here](http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/252553.html) and [ here](http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/252553.html).

  
 **Writing task (invented by me)** : Person X enters an unknown location and is nervous.  


I will make Person X be John Sheppard, not that it matters. And the unknown location be an underground chamber on another planet.

  


In the style of the 19th-century best-selling novel I am currently reading, _Fabiola, or the Church of the Catacombs_ by Cardinal Frederick Wiseman, 1854  
The seventh lunar period after the solar solstice on the world of Saragastra, otherwise known as Planet MX-178 P-5, is a glorious season. The sun has shed the heat of his fiercest season but retains his mellow splendour. Sweet are the rays he casts upon the briny feather trees of the slopes of Ice Mountain; he envelops the bays and coves of the southern seas in his autumnal splendour, the rocky outcrops reaching out their arms wide into the frothing foam of the surf. Rainbow fish and the lizard called _eye-of-the-sky_ by the natives of this land, wallow in the shallows of the mud-covered beaches as the sun marches across the azure heavens, bending his divine steps ever along the path of the God of the Night. Pleasant are these last days before the great frost, as the breeze sweeps over the sandy wood groves and ruffles the papery leaves of the rich amber _magasca_ shrubs.

It is to one of these groves that I must now guide my reader's eyes. Here, in the heat-soaked sands, we find a lonely traveller, bent upon some task of great urgency, to judge by his furrowed brows and swift steps. His build is of uncommon height, his gaze frank and manly, his bearing as of one used to listen and be listened to. His legs and bare arms are well-developed by exercise, and he wears the close-fitting leggings and elaborately-padded vest of a member of the armed forces of the world of Earth. A

While we have thus been noting him, the wayfarer has crossed the glade and come to a dark opening in the side of one of the sand hills. He bent down cautiously to inspect the door that is set into the mound. It is a door of ancient make, its hinges forged from iron and its handle of an intricate design. John, as we must now reveal our traveller's name to be, carefully manipulated the handle, and the door creaked open, spewing forth the dank vapours of an underground chamber.

John did not advance at once into the tunnel thus opened to him. He tested the threshold with his boot, then drew forth a small instrument from one of his pockets and pointed it at the gaping cavity. If we observe him closely, we may see the perspiration on the back of his neck.

Exclamation  
Fuck! a door! what a find! who'd have thought! come on! go in! damn this sand! hello! an ancient door knob! well, I'll be! here we go, must open it! shit! won't open! yes! it will! here we go! into the lion's den! hush! a noise! no, just my heart, crap! in we go! not to worry! it'll be fine! sure! how dark! how dank! in I go! onwards and downwards!

No secondary clauses, present tense, no incomplete sentences  
John walks in a straight line across the sand glade. He stops. There is the hill. There is the door in the hill. Where will it lead? John doesn't know. He takes out his life signs detector. The only life sign on the life sign detector is himself. He looks at the door. His neck sweats. The hinges creak. The door swings inwards. John peers into the underground tunnel. It smells dark. He doesn't like the smell. He doesn't like the silence inside. His first step falters. Then he plunges in.

First person point-of-view, subjective, homodiegetic narrator  
([What is homodiegetic narration?](http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/129111.html))  
I didn't like the look of the planet. I had a funny feeling about it as soon as I got through the stargate. Something wasn't right, I couldn't have said what, but I've developed an intuition for these things. Or maybe it's the gene, who knows? Maybe the Ancients had mutated, maybe they all had this sixth sense or whatever it is. Survival of the fittest and all.

The place I especially didn't like was that sand patch in the middle of those weird red shrubs. Come to think of it, the shrubs themselves had something odd about them. It was the way they smelled, and the way they waved those zigzaggy little leaves of theirs. Also, the colours were all wrong. Too golden, too molten, it was like having sunlight poured over your skin, literally.

And that door on the other side of the sand patch. I definitely didn't like that door. All right, it looked sort of Ancient but not quite. Again, I've developed a feeling for all things Ancient. It had a door knob of a kind I'd never seen before, not the usual hand-activated plate. This was a real knob. Or rather, more of a handle.

I pushed it down, like you would a door handle on Earth. Nothing happened. I tugged at it, I twisted it, I jiggled it a little, and then, bingo. The door swung open.

Inside, there was a tunnel. It was dark as pitch, no more of this molten light, not in there. An old smell came out of it, the smell of a place that hadn't been exposed to the fresh air for years, decades, maybe even centuries. It was the smell of a forgotten place. It was the smell of fear because it made the back of my neck break out in a thousand drops of sweat.

Now that's a sure sign. Once my neck starts sweating, I just know there's going to be trouble.

txt  
Am on MX-178 P-5. About 2 go in undergr tunnel. Shit scared.

One sentence  
Bathed by the mellow light of what on Earth would have passed for late autumn in Massachusetts, John Sheppard, having advanced across the grove with caution and not stopped until he had reached the other side where, ominous in the sandy hillside, a wooden door that was hung on rusted hinges and adorned with an elaborately worked handle, presented its impassive face to the sleepy hollow, stood contemplatively before trying out the handle, once, twice, thrice until it gave under his tentative fingers, and then adjusted his gaze to the dark shadows inside, trying to ignore the rapidly cooling beads of perspiration on his nape but, fear pushed to the back of his mind in a mental motion smooth with use, forged on ahead, not knowing what lay in the depths of this alien planet, in the bellies of its soil, at the navel of its evil heart.

Another sentence  
John Sheppard walked up to the door in the hillside and, after having moved the handle around in various ways, managed to open the door and peer in fear into the dark underground tunnel behind.

Second-person point of view, homodiegetic narrator, pov of the door  
How long had it been that she had seen a human? Too long. The last time was when she was made, indeed. She still remembered the calloused hands of the blacksmith who fitted her with the hinges and who caressed the ornate handle on her breast before tightening the final screws. After that, the ceremonies, the chanting, the dancing, the anointing with oil.

And then, nothing.

Nothing except the sun moving by overhead, ice melting into grasses, flowers bending in the wind, red blossoms tumbling into winter again. Once, a little lizard had snuggled up to her for a few hours, its belly soft and its breathing very fast against her wood.

Behind her, always the inexorable dark.

And then, the human.

He was quite tall, taller than she remembered humans being. He had very little hair, and what he had, grew only on his head. The stuffs hanging off his person looked different from what she remembered but he was human enough. When he came up close, he smelled human, and when he put his hands on her, the timbers shivered under his calloused skin.

He caressed her handle, just as the blacksmith had done so many moonshines ago. He stroked, he smoothed, he rubbed with practised fingers. And then she groaned and opened up for him.

It was only when the chasm yawned its blackness into the sunny glade, that she sensed the fear of the human. 'Don't go,' she wanted to say but she had no speech.

Precision  
At 0800 hours, galactic meantime, on the 31st of the cosmic month of September, Major John Sheppard of the Stargate Atlantis mission, stationed in the Pegasus Galaxy of the Known Universe, stepped into the sandy glade that is situated 25.72 kilometres from the south shore of the Eastern continent of the planet MX-178 P-5 (called 'Saragastra' in the Saragan language, 'Charag' in the dialect of the Eastern Saragan, and 'Lizard Lid' in the language of the Last of the Athosians).

Major Sheppard took 134 steps across the glade which has a circumference of 20.34 metres and whose sand density is 56 to the millimetre. It took him 3 minutes and 22 seconds to cross the glade. He reached the door on the other side; this door is 1 metre 56 centimetres in height, 98 centimetres in width, attached with two metal-block dual iron hinges on its left and fitted with an iron door handle, shaped in the form of a Saragan bird of prey. It sports no key hole. It is made of feather tree wood, with three uprights latched together with 3-centimetre dowels.

The pulse rate of Major Sheppard was 110. The moisture content of a five-centimetre patch between his collar and hair on the back of his neck was 800. The pupils of Major Sheppard dilated by one fifth after the door opened. The light differential between the tunnel on the other side of the door and the surface of the sandy grove was 5.089.

Nouns  
Planet. Glade. Sand. Hill. Door.

Man. Name: John. Surname: Sheppard. Rank: Major.

Handle. Activation procedure. Human factor. Fear. Nape. Sweat.

Darkness.

\----

(LJ: <http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/430541.html>  
This page: http://archiveofourown.org/works/184378 )


End file.
